Intersolar North America, the most-attended solar industry event in North America, drew a record crowd of more than 18,000 from over 80 countries to its ninth annual exhibition and conference in San Francisco last week. Attendance was boosted by the co-located ees North America, an exhibition and conference dedicated to the energy storage market. ees added significantly to the event’s exhibitor base, with 41 percent growth over the previous year.

Since 1961, the Shockley-Queisser Limit has represented an absolute theoretical limit in identifying the efficiency of traditional solar cells in the conversion of energy. A single-layer cell made of silicon, used in the vast majority of today’s solar panels, has an upper limit of about 32 percent. Studies under way to identify whether multiple layers of cells lead to increased overall efficiency by a method known as solar thermophotovoltaics (STPV). In principle, this method of pairing conventional solar cells with added layers of high-tech materials would lead to doubling the theoretical limit of efficiency and double the power from panels.

Nissan has reached a major breakthrough with its new lithium ion battery generation, which will significantly extend the driving range of zero-emission electric vehicles. As car batteries are continually charged and depleted, overall battery capacities begin to diminish, eventually leading to battery replacement. It remains one of the many issues affecting electric vehicles, however, Nissan believes they may have found the solution by using silicon.

Even with the 2nd largest energy consumption and expenditure in the USA , California has some of the lowest per capita consumption patterns in the country. This; when combined with its robust renewable energy production (nearly 4000MW solar projects installed), and a more diversified energy portfolio, sees it trailblazing towards its landmark energy targets. In addition, shielding its economy from the volatility of oil prices, California provides a model that can be used nationally, as well as globally.

Solar power is becoming increasingly competitive and is leading to reductions in the costs of photovoltaics. Emerging and developing countries are seeing a new focus on wind and solar power, as generating it is often considerably cheaper than buying electricity from the grid, with long-term solutions providing independence from fluctuations in fossil fuel prices. The improved speed of installation also allows for renewable energy systems to be positioned in areas with greatest electricity demand.

A new solar power technology has been developed, generating energy by harnessing diamonds. A European research team within the European Commission’s FP7 framework, are leading the ProME3ThE2US2 project, developing the ‘black diamond’ as a breakthrough concept which is expected to change the future of solar technology. It has the potential to exceed 50 per cent efficiency in solar concentration systems. As an exciting new low-cost material, it also has potential beyond solar technology.

San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has signed a 20MW energy storage facility agreement, capable of storing enough electricity to power 28,000 homes for up to 4 hours. The project can store supplies of solar, wind and other resources when they are abundant and inexpensive, releasing this during peak hours when customer demand is high. The company also signed an 18.5MW energy efficiency agreement. Both contracts aim to provide customers with reliable, affordable and clean energy.

The proposed project is believed to be the first utility-scale system in the U.S. to provide dispatchable solar energy, meaning that the utility can count on electricity being available when it’s needed, even hours after the sun goes down. The 52 MWh Tesla Powerpack lithium-ion battery storage system will feed up to 13 megawatts of electricity onto the grid to “shave” the amount of conventional power generation needed to meet peak demand in the evening from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m.

The market leader wants to create a ‘living laboratory’ at it’s North American R&D hub “to drive global innovation in efficiency and energy management solutions”. The microgrid will be deployed via a new business model that does not require any capital investment by Schneider Electric. It’s expected to begin generating 560,000 Kwh per year of electricity by Autumn 2016. Beyond saving the company nearly 5 percent on electricity costs at the site in its first year, the Microgrid will offer power resiliency in the event of a power loss from the local utility.

Bion Environmental Technologies has developed a next generation technology platform to enable the capture of ammonia. By capturing the ammonia, Bion not only prevents its impacts to the environment as before, but is now able to recover and process substantially more of the nitrogen in the manure stream into a stabilized value-added product. This platform can now utilise anaerobic digestion to produce methane which can then be cleaned and injected into existing pipelines, resulting in clean renewable compressed natural gas.